Getting To Know Your International Contacts Part 1

I have been very disappointed by the lack of response from those who I had contacted in Australia and Hong Kong. I have sent second requests and still have not had any type of response, therefore, I had to resort to the alternate assignment.

I have visited the World Forum website and have listened to a few pod casts. The first was from Susan Lyon Director of the Innovative Teacher Project in San Francisco. Susan had been a teacher and had seen a window into the children's minds and it was quite fascinating to her. She had learned about the schools in Reggio Emilia and was inspired to visit the schools in Reggio Emilia. She had been inspired by the exhibit 100 languages of children. She brought the exhibit to the San Francisco area and began professional development using the Reggio Emilia Approach. Soon she began the Innovative Teacher Project-where there is a collaboration of schools and teachers who use this program for their own professional development. She had wanted to prove that this quality type of work could happen in the public center. So she used a stand alone private center to use as the pilot project....the school thrived and has become a real inspiration.

The second pod cast I listened to was Irma Allen-Chairperson for Swaziland Development Authority (Equivalent of U.S. EPA). She trains people to become early childhood professionals. Nature comes in very strongly. The local environment is the classroom. They are the materials and the medium-they are everything. They rely on every grass, tree, the weather, water, the dew etc to create a greater expect for the environment and conservation. They had been having a farewell party for a teacher who was leaving and when everyone was leaving a young man raised his hand and ask to speak. He had been one of the first students to attend the school. He was an orphan, he remembered this lady who had smiled and opened her arms he felt that someone cared, and he learned to appreciate his country, his home, his environment which he had previously taken for granted. As he grew up he remembered back to his early childhood experiences and how important they were to him.

I also visited the Childhood Poverty Research and Policy Center's website and researched the poverty rate in China, the most populous country (population of 1.27 billion). China has made major strides in poverty reduction in recent years. 

By 2001  5% of China's population lived below the national poverty line, with rural poverty estimated to have fallen from 250 million (1978) to 35 million in 2000 and the Urban population was between 4 and 8% down from 15-31%.
One critical area of reform is the ongoing restructuring of state-owned enterprises. In 1995-2000, the state sector lost 31 million jobs. Not enough new jobs in the non-state sector have yet been created and an estimated 14.6 million are without a full-time job - an unemployment rate of 12.3 per cent.  In addition to this, inflation in the early 1990s and the introduction of charges for health and education services increased pressures on many households. Liberalization has also led to massive migration, as over 120 million people have moved to the cities since 1990, in search of better opportunities.

4.2 million Chinese children live in absolute poverty and 8.7 million live in disadvantaged conditions. Education and health levels in China are higher than in many countries with equivalent incomes, however, improvements in these areas have slowed in the 90s and regional differences remain. Recent studies suggest that the health and education reforms are reducing poor families' ability to make use of these vital services



As the structure of the economy has changed, the social security system has had to adapt to protect people from different forms of poverty. Up to 1992, in urban areas, only people without work, with no savings and with no family to depend on were eligible for financial support.  A Minimum Living Standards (dibao) system has been developed since 1997 and by 2002 covered 23 per cent of poor urban households. Though this is the main form of social relief in urban China, there are concerns that the amounts allocated are too small to meet people's basic needs for food, clothing shelter, health and education and in particular, aren't enough to allow families to pay the compulsory education fee. Furthermore, large numbers of vulnerable people are excluded because they are unregistered migrants, or are disqualified by local administrations.

The Ministry of Civil Affairs, under whose responsibility the dibao system falls, is considering increasing the amount paid to ensure that it does, for example, enable school attendance and extending this system to rural areas. It is therefore interested in finding out how far it protects poor families, and their priorities for additional support. CHIP is working with this Ministry to explore these issues as part of wider research on urban poverty and its effects on children.

Poverty is everywhere and it will take some major changes to help reduce its effects, especially on children.